a few miles,—containing from five hundred to a thousand inhabitants each. They possess altogether a territory extending about 35 miles across each way, and within this area fifteen thousand Natives are located, living altogether after their own fashion and governed in accordance with their own native laws.
Their position is the more remarkable because their territory is absolutely surrounded by that of the Orange Free State,—as the territory of the Orange Free State is surrounded by the territories of Great Britain. The Republic which we know as the Free State is as it were an island within the ocean of the British Colonies, and the land of the Baralongs is again an island circled by the smaller sea of the Republic. And this is still more remarkable from the fact that whereas the Natives have been encouraged on all sides to make locations on British territory they have been altogether banished as a land-holding independent people from the Free State. Throughout the British Colonies of South Africa the number of the Natives exceeds that of the Europeans by about eight to one. In the Republic the Europeans exceed the Natives by two to one. And the coloured people who remain there,—or who have emigrated thither, which has been more generally the case,—are the servants employed in the towns and by the farmers. And yet, in spite of this, a separate nation of 15,000 persons lives quietly and, I must say, upon the whole prosperously within the Free State borders, altogether hemmed in, but in no way oppressed.
It would take long to explain how a branch of the great tribe of the Bechuanas got itself settled on this land,—on
